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I used the new high e-stab on my s5iix on a shoot last week to test it out, pretty dang smooth! Although the crop is quite significant, I was running around getting very gimbal-like footage on the venerable sigma 18-35, but at 18mm, plus the crop in 60p, still quite tight, so I may use this more with the Sigma 14-24. Great new tool in the toolbox of this already amazing camera though.

That depends. If you use your lights daily, renting is far less affordable. If you'll use them only once every 5 years, renting is far more affordable. Somewhere in-between those two things is an inflection point (which shifts around depending on sales). My Amaran 300C was $455 for Black Friday last year and it came with a free medium-quality light stand. At lensrentals.com, the Amaran 300C goes for $87 for 7 days. So after I've used the light on 6 shoots, I will have saved money vs renting. Since it arrived in December, I've used it for 2. After the shoots ended, I didn't have to put it back in a box and drive it to the post office so it's also saving me some time. If I don't want it in a few years, I'll probably be able to sell it for $100-150. Plus I have that extra light stand going for me. That's pretty nice. 😄

renting tends to be the most affordable option

Maybe the forum has been taken over by AI and it's become sentient and agreed with your comments so much it wanted everyone to read them several times!!

I watched this video recently about synthesisers and recording equipment magazines (which operate incredibly similarly to cameras) and yeah, print magazines almost make YouTube reviewers look honest by comparison. TLDR: he analysed a magazine from 2002 and out of 188 pages, 79 were full page ads (he didn't even bother to count half-page ads either, so the ad coverage was way higher) all reviews were positive except for the odd little minor comment, and none of the sub-category scores in any review were even below 2.5/5 (except one product which got 1.5/5 for a subcategory, but that was because it had too many ads!!)

The situation with review content being affected by commercial interests is nothing new in the slightest... Many years ago I was asked if I was interested in doing a product review for a now long-gone print magazine. I tried to be as fair as possible when I wrote it, but thought the product had some usability/compatibility issues that needing fixing. The version of the review printed in the magazine had some of my criticism watered-down, I assume partly because advertising revenue related to the product was important to the finances of the magazine. I only did a couple of reviews for the magazine in the end, mostly because the amount they paid for them wasn't much in relation the work involved in testing a product properly (and I wasn't interested in doing quicker, more superficial reviews).

A 'walking about in a forest' comparison from Robert May of the S5iix stabilisation modes at 14mm (very wide angle) using the 14-28mm f4-5.6 lens(which doesn't have OIS): Pretty impressive stabilisation performance with minimal warping artefacts.

Sorry. UK idiom. 'Old' in that context doesn't mean old. My bad.

Luc Forsyth Jacques Crafford Cam Mackey Mark Bone

LOL, yeah, or self-importance or narcissistic or megalomanianism etc 😂😂😂 I guess in that case they don't have a clear idea of the industry they're in, likely because they're thinking about themselves rather than their audience. Entertainment is very broad and is sort-of a catch-all for the other categories, but I think it's still useful as it firmly defines that the purpose is to engage and entertain. I think that because YT was new and people didn't really understand what it was or how it fit into the world people weren't clear that it still fit the definitions that had been previously established, but (as usual) the pros had figured it out already and there (almost never) isn't anything new under the sun.

Self-indulgence? 😉 Entertainment is probably an overly-broad category, but that's splitting hairs.

Why did it triple post?

Oh sweet, a double post

Oh, maybe I misunderstood "big old lights" to mean "big, old lights." High wattage LEDs from those companies are all fairly recent--even within the realm of LED lights themselves being fairly recent. Seems to me that quality LEDs have only become available at reasonable prices within the last 5 years or so.

Lok just posted a video talking about the S5ii and talks about the new e-stabilisation feature, and it looks like it has completely eliminated the IBIS wobble on wide lenses? He includes examples with him walking with a wide lens, so it looks like a legit test:

With all the discussions recently about YouTubers I've been thinking about this as I watch YT videos and I remembered this comment and wanted to come back to it. I think that perhaps one of the things that would help a YouTuber achieve success on the platform is having a clear idea of what business they are really in. For example, and off the top of my head, YouTubers likely fall into one of the following: Advertising (as has been discussed) Entertainment Education Journalism These are pretty broad, but I would suggest that each has a clear definition and purpose, with clear principles on how it is done, how to make money, and what is to be expected from a good (and dodgy) channel. I'm guessing that if you don't really know which category a YouTuber is in, then perhaps they're drifting into dodgy territory. Did I miss any?

@Parker is right that having too much isn't a problem because you can just turn the lights down or put on more ND etc, but in order to not end up buying $20,000 worth of lights unnecessarily, maybe just do some tests with your own light? Work out what the largest amount of light would be that you would need on a regular basis (you can always rent for the 5% of times that are an exception) and then test your own 150W one and just crank up the ISO to see how many stops brighter a light you would need for that situation. It's work, but in film-making you pay for everything one way or the other.. with money or with time or with experience etc.

Bigger, heavier duty fixtures are probably outside the budget you're willing to spend, but I'll just offer the devil's advocate view to the other posters here, that you can never, ever have too bright of a light. I generally use a Nanlux evoke 1200 as my keylight, usually shooting through a 4x4 frame of magic cloth, and I am frequently at 100% power and needing more output, sometimes ganging it with an additional 1200B, 600D, Prolycht 675, whatever I have available. Granted, I am usually trying to hold some exposure through windows and the like, and I prefer to light with big, soft, beautiful keys, but still. You'll never regret having more power at your disposal. That will just allow you to bounce more, diffuse more, shoot through more material... always an advantage! Also worth mentioning, but bigger fixtures are more portable than you might think; until I recently upgraded to a full-size production van, for the past several years I've been able to easily carry a 1200d, Prolycht 675, 4' pavo tubes, in addition to a Nanlite forza 500, aputure 300d, spotlight attachment, 4 or 5 turtle-base c-stands, 4x4 frames and diffusion, various softboxes, not to mention all the accompanying bits and bobs of grip, power, dolly and of course, cameras, lenses, etc.... all within the confines of my beloved '09 Honda Civic. Now that I am finally in a bigger vehicle, I've got the Nanlux 2400b on my soon-to-purchase list as well. And I'm sure I'll very frequently still want more power.

The videos I've seen them in have all been from the last year or two - mainly Nanlites with a couple of Aputures and Godox in the mix. Of course, some of those videos have been in the 'gaffer testing stuff' genre made in guys' garages, but others have been, in the main, DPs on higher end shoots and some tutorials (I think quite a few of the notable working DP Tubers have been given freebies, so they reckon, 'why the hell not use it?'.

I personally think that these are hard to beat. I own four of them. I came from running two 575w HMIs but these are brighter, quieter, and more affordable. There's no ballast or extra cabling, which for me is a plus. They also have a dedicated remote control available so you don't have to rely on an app. The only "drawback" is that they can't be powered by v-mounts, but I have other lights that can be. I'm very intrigued by the design of the new Molus G300 because I think I could fit two or maybe even three into a single case. But there are several ways in which the Nanlites still beat them.

Everyone posting here might know this, but just for inexperienced readers' sake, I'll point out that the light output per watt of different light types is very different. An LED is about twice the lumens/watt of an HMI, so a 5k HMI is not equivalent output to a 5k LED. Strictly in terms of bang for buck, tungsten might be the mot affordable. You can get used tungsten fixtures and replacement lamps for nothing compared to LEDs. Of course you'll be dealing with uncomfortable heat output, dangerous surface temperatures, and insane power draws. For those reasons, I opt for LEDs these days, despite the price. Right now I use an Amaran 100D and 200D and I'm happy with them for their price. The important thing other than light quality is to use a standard mount (such as Bowen) for shared modifiers. Are you sure they were LED and not HMI? I don't think we've had quality LED lights that powerful for very many years so I'd be curious which old units they were. I could be wrong though.

If you just want footage with no commentary, markr041 who is a user here has a YouTube channel and he tends to try a pretty decent number of the cameras that come out. They're usually decently shot and I don't think I've ever even seen one where he talked about the camera (or even showed his face). 😃

Nothing really new and I'm sure is not just insta... but is indeed bad. They produced good stuff no need of these bad behaviors. The good news is that the more and more of this comes out and hopefully people will learn to be very skeptical about those reviewers.... I normally just skim true and look at the video to get an idea. Very fishy are also the comparison gopro vs insta and so on..... I wish some will simply create some good footage and do a bts and not bla bla gamechanger, why I switch, best ever, is so much better than camera b and worst of all with a stupid face on the thumbnail. This is the only one that I really liked, sponsored yes, but starts with really good footage and goes in to how he did it. Still a big Ad, but much better than all these pseudos expert reivewers crap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHT27gW91kU

The majority of YT that I watch has nothing to do with cameras, and in general the people that have the most followers have the least fancy camera equipment. I mean, there are probably more channels that have over 500K subscribers and are just shot with a smartphone than all the active camera YT channels combined.

Sorry to take the thread off-topic, by the way.